Your Lease Explained
When you bought your home you signed a lease. Your lease is a legal document that explains your rights and responsibilities as a ‘leaseholder’ (or lessee) and the relationship between you and us, as the ‘freeholder’ of your home.
Your solicitor will have explained the lease before you bought your home, but if you have any questions your solicitor or Tower Homes will help you.
Your lease explains:
- When and by how much your rent goes up each year.
- How you can buy more shares in your home.
- How you can sell your home.
If you bought a newly-built home a plan will be attached to your lease. This plan shows the boundaries of your home, as well as any car-parking spaces and the fences and walls that are your responsibility to maintain.
The lease contains legally-binding responsibilities both for you and us.
Your responsibilities:
- You must pay your rent and service charge, as set out in your lease.
- You must not carry out major alterations to your home without our permission.
- You must not cause a nuisance or annoy your neighbours.
- You must keep your home in good repair inside and out if you have a house and inside if you have an apartment.
- You must get permission from us to keep a pet, fit wooden flooring or fit a satellite dish if you live in an apartment or house that we have built. If you bought your home under the DIYSO scheme, there are usually no restrictions.
Our responsibilities:
- We must keep your home insured.
- We must consult you about repairs to any shared areas that will cost more than £250 for each home.
- We must keep the outside of apartment blocks in good repair.
- We must provide audited service-charge accounts where we provide services.
- We must not unreasonably refuse you permission for improvements or alterations that you may want to make to your home.
It is important that you keep to the conditions of your lease.
If you would like any more information about your lease, please contact your residential services officer.
Find out who the residential services officer is for your area: 
Scheme Management Areas (184 KB).